Best Credit Monitoring Service for 2017

Stay on top of your credit history and don't let your identity easily vanish

If you’re worried about becoming a victim to identity theft, now is the time to take actionable steps to protect yourself. This is a problem that continues to change and evolve with technology, so there is no reason to expect hackers to give up on stealing identities in 2017. Based on this unfortunate fact, I conducted some serious research on the best credit monitoring services available today. My focus was mainly on comprehensive credit monitoring with identity theft protection, but I also found some great options that work well for low-cost credit report monitoring.

Featured Credit Monitoring Services

According to a study by the Pew Research Center, 18% of adults had some form of personal data stolen in 2014 — up from 11% in 2013. You’ve probably heard about all the breaches at high-profile companies, including JPMorgan, Target, Home Depot, and eBay. In 2015, health-insurance giant Anthem suffered a data breach attack that impacted over 80 million patient and employee records, potentially exposing vital information like names, birthdates, and even Social Security numbers. This data breach could cost Anthem well over $100 million dollars in damages and litigation.

Google-X’s Top Picks for Best Credit Monitoring Services

After completing my research, I can safely say that the following credit monitoring services are at the top of their class:

The Bureau of Justice says losses from identity theft in 2012 added up to more than $24.7 billion. That’s $10 billion more than all other types of property theft combined. These numbers show that, even though technology is improving our lives, it is also making us more susceptible to online theft.

Best Comprehensive Credit Monitoring Services

The first three products listed below offer full credit monitoring services, plus identity theft protection and access to your credit report. If you’re looking for the most comprehensive services to stay protected in 2017, these are your best options.

Best Overall Credit Monitoring Service: Identity Guard®

After weeks of research, I have concluded that is the best credit monitoring service currently on the market. Not only is it a comprehensive program that monitors certain changes in your credit, but it also provides some of the best ID theft protection in the industry.

The company’s Total Protection® and Platinum plans ($14.99 a month and $24.99 a month, respectively) monitor all three major credit bureaus for changes to your reports, helping you make more informed financial decisions. On top of this, they monitor personal information like your name and Social Security number across thousands of databases. The Total Protection plan provides an updated credit score quarterly, while the Platinum plan provides this benefit monthly. There is also a $9.99 Essentials Plan that omits three-bureau monitoring, credit score updates, and certain other features.

For $9.99 a month (members with individual plans can add this service on for $5 a month), Identity Guard also offers an Identity Guard for Kids plan that can keep your children’s information safe. This plan includes social security number monitoring, public records monitoring, and bank account monitoring. You’ll be alerted immediately if someone tries to use your child’s information to open an account or credit card, for example. Unlike with other services, this is a stand-alone plan, meaning you don’t have to purchase it as an add-on to protect your kids.

Available with every plan, ID verification alerts and account takeover alerts proactively notify you when certain online account information has been accessed or changed. This way, you can quickly take action if your accounts were accessed fraudulently. These services are included in the same plans as their credit monitoring service so you just pay a single monthly fee for both.

If you happen to become a victim of ID theft, offers services to get you back on your feet fast. A victim hotline gives you access to a trained expert who can help you put the pieces together. Meanwhile, lost-wallet protection gets your credit cards cancelled and replaced fast, while $1 million in ID theft insurance covers all losses you incur as the result of identity theft.

Although I’m a fan of Identity Guard’s services, it would be nice if the company included address-change monitoring in its base Essentials plan like many of its competitors. With that being said, Identity Guard still offers the best product – and the best protection – money can buy.

LifeLock® also monitors thousands of black-market websites where ID thieves buy and sell stolen information. If your personal information shows up there, you are alerted. They also work with the credit bureaus to reduce the number of annoying preapproved credit card offers by taking your name off mailing lists.

Both features are available at all plan levels, including the $8.99 a month Standard Plan. Upgrading to the $17.99 Advantage Plan adds features including fictitious identity monitoring, court records scanning, data breach notifications, and annual credit reports from one credit bureau. The $26.99 Ultimate Plus Plan includes reports from all three credit bureaus, credit-inquiry alerts, sex-offender registry reports, and monthly credit score tracking, among other features.

With the add-on, you can also protect your child’s identity, which makes LifeLock perfect for families. Children’s clean credit is often a gold mine for thieves because they are largely unmonitored. If your child’s information was stolen and used, it may go undetected for years and do lasting damage. Note that this protection cannot be purchased on its own, and must be bundled with another plan.

Highlights:

Identity Threat Detection and Alerts

Black-Market Website Monitoring

Lost-Wallet Protection

Sex Offender Registry Reports (Ultimate Plus plan only)

Monthly Credit Score Tracking (Ultimate Plus plan only)

LifeLock would be an even stronger service if it had a separate child-focused plan instead of offering this as an add-on. Reports from all three credit bureaus are also only available with the highest-priced plan.

IdentityForce

is another top service for credit monitoring. For $19.95 per month, their premium UltraSecure+Credit plan monitors all three credit bureaus and notifies you by email if any changes occur on your reports. A monthly statement comes in handy to help keep you informed of what’s going on with your credit files.

On the ID protection front, IdentityForce also offers a variety of tools available to protect your personal information. Their comprehensive monitoring feature keeps tabs on any address changes, court records, credit reports, payday loans, and sex offender lists to make sure your information is not being used without your knowing. All of these features are available with the UltraSecure+Credit plan as well as the more basic UltraSecure plan for $12.95 a month.

In the event a problem occurs, you have 24/7 access to Identity Restoration Specialists who save you lots of time and headaches by completing all the paperwork, making calls, and doing all the heavy lifting to make sure your identity is restored.

is another great choice for a families. Like LifeLock, this company can protect your children. Their Child Watch service delivers proactive credit monitoring, identity monitoring, and ID theft insurance for your kids. It is an add-on to their UltraSecure and UltraSecure+Credit plans.

Highlights:

Identity Threat Detection and Alerts

Lost-Wallet Protection

$1 Million in ID Theft Insurance

Identity Restoration Specialists

Court Records and Sex-Offender Monitoring

3-Bureau Credit Monitoring (UltraSecure+Credit plan only)

As with LifeLock, it would be nice if IdentityForce offered a separate child-focused plan, not just an add-on.

The Best Credit Monitoring Services — Credit Reporting Bureaus

If you’re less concerned with ID theft protection, credit monitoring services from one of the main credit reporting bureaus is a great place to start.

These options can be more affordable and have flat fees for one-time access to your credit report if you just want to know where you stand before applying for a loan. Here are the top two options:

Experian

Experian makes the list of the best credit monitoring services by offering triple-bureau credit monitoring with a variety of options for one-time access to your credit report. You can purchase your Experian credit report and FICO Score for $19.95 or get all three credit bureau reports for $39.95. This feature is great if you just need to check in on your credit score once in a while.

For more active monitoring, the Experian Credit Tracker gets you your Experian credit score and credit report, plus triple-bureau daily credit monitoring and dedicated fraud resolution support. This service has a $1 seven-day trial; after that, it’s $21.95 a month.

Experian does have some ID protection features, but they fall short of the more comprehensive services like . The Experian ProtectMyID® service takes the Experian Credit Tracker features and adds daily Internet ID scanning to look for your personal information that may be publicly available on the Internet, lost-wallet protection, change of address monitoring, and fraud resolution. It is $15.95 a month.

Finally, Experian also offers credit reports and credit monitoring for your small business. This is a rare service offered only by the major credit bureaus.

Highlights:

3-Bureau Credit Report Monitoring

Credit Report Change Alerts

One-Time Access to Credit Report

Dedicated Fraud Resolution Support

Lost-Wallet Protection (ProtectMyID only)

ID Theft Insurance (Protect MyID only)

Experian offers a good range of services, and its upselling of the monthly credit-monitoring service is less aggressive than competitors. However, if you do choose this service, it’s a bit pricier than comparable options, as is Experian’s identity-theft service.

TransUnion

Like Experian, is another credit reporting bureau that provides some of the best credit monitoring services. As a member, you have access to triple-bureau credit monitoring alerts, so you will be notified of any suspicious activity. TransUnion used to monitor only their own report. This flaw kept them from being one of the best credit monitoring services in the past.

If you’re looking to get one-time access to your credit report, you can receive your TransUnion score for free and credit report for just $1 by signing up for a free seven-day trial. Cancel at any time during the seven days and you won’t be charged the $17.95 membership fee, which includes your FICO score, credit and debt analysis tools, and the ability to lock down your TransUnion Credit Report to protect it from identity thieves.

You can add some ID theft protection by signing up for for $9.95 a month. This service monitors many of the same public records as other services and alerts you if your information shows up there. Other features include lost-wallet protection, address-change monitoring, and access to identity restoration specialists.

If you believe you’ve been a victim of identity fraud, the security freeze feature prevents lenders from accessing your TransUnion credit report entirely. This makes it less likely that a lender will extend credit to someone posing as you. Tools like these offer you peace of mind since they allow you a greater level of control over your account.

Highlights:

3-Bureau Credit Report Monitoring

Credit Report Change Alerts

One-Time Access to Credit Report

Identity Restoration Services (True Identity only)

Lost-Wallet Protection (True Identity only)

ID Theft Insurance (True Identity only)

Security Freeze

As for downsides, it’s unclear whether you can buy your triple-bureau credit report from TransUnion without signing on for a monthly fee. That makes it especially important to cancel your service before the seven-day trial period ends if you don’t want to pay for monthly access.

What exactly does credit monitoring entail?

There are two main reasons you’ll want to use a credit monitoring service:

You’re concerned about identity theft and want to protect against it.

You need to improve or repair your credit score, but you’re not as concerned about ID theft protection.

Credit monitoring tracks your credit reports and notifies you of any significant changes. Since all things financial flow to your credit report, including loans, credit cards, and payment histories, your credit report is a major factor that financial companies use to extend you any type of loan.

Many times, people are unaware of derogatory reports that show up on their credit report until they actually apply for a loan — when it’s already too late. Knowing what’s in your credit report is extremely important for this reason. Derogatory reports like a delinquency from a creditor can affect your credit score for years. You’ll also want to know your score prior to applying for any credit cards so you know you’ll be accepted.

The other important way people use credit monitoring services is to prevent identity theft. Any financial account that is opened in your name with your Social Security number will show up on this report. Identity thieves prey on unsuspecting people by taking information about them and using it to use or open new financial accounts in your name. Credit monitoring services notify you any time a new account is opened so you can respond quickly.

There are a number of steps you can take to better protect yourself, but having your credit monitored by a professional team can give you the greatest edge by letting you know — in near real time — what is affecting your credit.

For most ID theft victims, having new accounts opened in their names is not the main issue, so credit report monitoring alone isn’t adequate. The big problem is that ID thieves use the above information to gain access to and control current bank, credit card, loan, and other accounts, which is where more proactive measures come in handy.

According the Bureau of Justice, for 85% of identity theft victims, the most recent incident involved the unauthorized use of an existing account.

This key statistic has great ramifications for determining which of the best credit monitoring service features have the most impact when it comes to combating ID theft.

How can the best credit monitoring services protect my existing accounts?

Simply monitoring a credit report only shows you when a new account has been opened, but doesn’t show you when your credit card has been used by someone else or when your bank account has been accessed.

The best credit monitoring services that make this list protect your open accounts with:

ID verification alerts

Account takeover alerts

Lost-wallet protection

ID theft victim assistance

Choosing the Best Credit Monitoring Services

Here’s an outline of how I got to my final choices:

Conducted research to find a list of all services

Removed companies that did not belong on the list because they feed business to other companies

Segmented the remaining companies based on their features

Analyzed features deeper to select a top product

For a more detailed look into my process for selecting these services, continue reading below.

I started my research by compiling a comprehensive list of credit monitoring services from multiple Internet sources. I found 20 companies to investigate further.

As I dug deeper, I found that several companies on my list were actually lead-generation sites for other companies on the list. Two examples are FreeCreditReport.com and FreeCreditScore.com, both owned by Experian. I instantly eliminated these companies and don’t recommend them.

The next step was segmentation. I found that while all the companies on the list provided some form of credit monitoring, some focused more on detecting and preventing ID theft while others were more focused on tracking your credit score and report to provide you with valuable information when applying for credit.

So, I segmented companies into two categories:

Comprehensive: for those that provided a set of credit monitoring services with a heavier emphasis on ID theft prevention.

Credit Reporting Bureaus: these companies are more focused on monitoring your credit changes and less on ID theft.

Once I had two categories, I focused more on features. For the comprehensive category, I focused on features that could protect existing accounts because, for over 85% of identity theft victims, the most recent incident involved the unauthorized use of an existing account.

The must-have features for this category include:

ID verification alerts

Account takeover alerts

Lost-wallet protection

ID theft victim assistance

For the Credit Reporting Bureau category, there are really only three options to choose from: Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax.

In this category, the distinguishing features that made Experian and the best are:

Ease of monitoring credit reports from all three bureaus

The alerting functions for changes to each report

Best options for one-time access to your credit score and credit report

Ability to add certain ID theft protection features

Wrapping Up the Search

Looking at everything that credit monitoring encompasses, I determined that was the best credit monitoring service.

Hands down, it has the most comprehensive features for not only monitoring changes in your credit file.